Cocktail Bar

Tell me: is there much better than a cold, refreshing beverage in dessert form? There may well be - in fact, I'm certain there are many things that are much, much better. But after sweating it out around the house on Saturday and Sunday, waiting for the rain which didn't come, biting into this cool, tangy Mojito Slice was pretty much as good as I could ask for. And afterwards, the rain started, so it was doubly good.

This slice can thank a recipe for Mojito Bars from Betty Goes Vegan for its inspiration. I fully intended to make that recipe. But the thought of having the oven on for 40 to 50 minutes was repulsive, and my mind quickly turned to Kari's vegan lemon slice recipe. I had made them before so I knew the recipe was a keeper, and was sure it would hold up to a few alterations. So this recipe is really Kari's, as I've done little but change the flavours. But they sure are good flavours. I thought at first the base would work as a no-bake option, but on pressing it into the pan I decided to bear the oven for 10 minutes, and I'm glad I did.

Mojito Slice

1 c. oats
1/4 c. brown sugar
2 Tbsp. vegan butter

1/4 c. flour
1/4 c. corn flour
1 c. sugar
up to 1 c. water
3 Tbsp. white rum
1 Tbsp. fresh mint, finely chopped
zest and juice from 2 or 3 limes

Line a slice pan with baking paper and heat the oven to 180 (350F). In a food processor or mini chopper, whizz up the oats and sugar until they look like coarse flour. Add the butter, and let the processor run until it's fully incorporated. You could add water if it looks really crumbly, but I didn't need to. Press it into the lined pan, using wet hands to keep the mix from being sticky. Bake it for 10 minutes and then let it cool while you make the topping.

In a measuring jug, combine the rum, mint and lime zest. Juice the limes into the jug. I used one large, juicy lime and 2 small, kinda dry limes. All up, it should come to about 1/2 cup of juice and rum combined. If you have more than 1/2 cup, use a bit less water in the next step.

In a small saucepan, whisk together the flour, corn flour and sugar. Slowly add the water and whisk until smooth. Bring it up to a boil, whisking constantly, and then turn the heat to low and cook it for a few minutes - up to 5. It will get really thick, but soon you will add more liquid, so no need to worry. Whisk in the lime juice mixture with the pan over the heat, then when everything is incorporated take it off the heat. Pour this over the cooked base. Refrigerate the whole thing for a while - overnight is best, really. Keep it chilled until you're ready to eat it, and remember that the alcohol doesn't really cook off!

Vegan Carbonara

As I promised at the very end of last year, I have made another batch of Carbonara so I can post the recipe here.

Carbonara is one of those dishes that a lot of people seem to love, but I had never even heard of before I went vegan. So I have no reference point to compare it to. But somewhere along the way I picked up the key ingredients - egg yolks, bacon, cream and pasta. Not super vegan friendly? Think again.

We had some Vegg in the freezer (we blend up the whole packet and freeze in smaller jars), and some imitation bacon bits (fully vegan) that my mum sent over as a birthday present. So the food miles for this are not small! It's not an every week kind of meal, but it is easy, and fast, filling, and really delicious. And unlike chicken's eggs, the Vegg won't "scramble" if you leave it on the heat for too long, so there is less multi-tasking with the vegan version of Carbonara.

Vegan Carbonara

1 Tbsp. olive or coconut oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
300 grams of mushrooms, thickly sliced
1 Tbsp. vegan bacon bits
1/2 c. prepared Vegg
100 mL coconut cream, soy milk or other non-dairy substitute
400 grams of pasta
parsley, salt and pepper, nutritional yeast, and more bacon bits for sprinkling

Heat the oil in a frying pan over pretty high (not quite the highest) heat. Saute the mushrooms until they are soft and the liquid has evaporated from them. The high heat helps evaporation to happen faster, so your mushrooms brown instead of boiling in their weird mushroom water. Stir in the garlic and bacon bits and mix it all around for a minute. Add Vegg and soy milk and turn the heat to low and leave it, stirring every now and then, while your pasta cooks. Boil water (boiling in the kettle is more efficient than the stove, I hear), cook spaghetti or other pasta until it is al dente, or mushy if that's your thing. Drain, dump it into the pan with the sauce, and stir it all up. If it's a bit claggy, throw in some more soy milk. It should be creamy and saucy and good. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve with parsley, nutritional yeast, and moar bacon bits.

It's worthing getting some Vegg for this - which reminds me, I need to order some more. I honestly will probably never attempt a vegan poached egg again, but Vegg makes a rocking carbonara.

Hey Buddy

Andy and I grow bananas, and so far we've had two plants with fruit on them. The first bunch of bananas took SO LONG before they were ready to pick - like 3 months or so. We cut off one hand at a time, rather than chopping down the whole bunch, so for 8 weeks or so we had fresh bananas from our back yard, rather than a glut all at once.

We have another bunch on a new plant, and it gave me a second opportunity to try eating the banana blossom. We did this with the first plant, but forgot to record anything about it. It's a weird looking part of the plant - a strange spear that looks nothing like a flower. The fruit forms underneath each petal, but after a while they stop producing. So we cut the flower off and eat it.

Start by peeling off the red petals. They are probably tough - I didn't actually try to eat them, but the whole internet says to get rid of them, and who am I to argue?

I tried to save two of these as fancy-pants serving bowls for our salad, but Andy tore them up and put them in the compost before I realised.

Underneath each petal are these little bunches of what would have become bananas (except that they don't, this far in - otherwise leave the flower in the tree!!). Supposedly you can eat these, if you separate out the stamen from the outer bit, but it sounds like a lot of work so we haven't tried yet.

This white thing is the part we eat. If you don't have a banana plant on hand, supposedly you can substitute cabbage in its place. Shred this as you do for cabbage.

Immediately put the banana blossom shreds into a bowl of water with lime juice. This is meant to keep it from browning. Mine went sort of gray anyways - the colour of a banana peel that's been cut, actually. It's not the most appetising appearance, but when it's covered with dressing it's not so bad.

I found this recipe and planned to sort of follow it, and then didn't really. Ours was an Asian-inspired salad based entirely on what we had in the pantry, fridge and garden, and it turned out really nice.

Tropical Vegan Banana Bud Salad

1 banana bud, shredded
1 yellow capsicum, cut into matchsticks
2 spring onions, chopped
1 green chilli, finely sliced
2 Tbsp. perennial coriander (aka culantro?), minced
3 Tbsp. vietnamese mint leaves, roughly chopped
1/4 c. crushed peanuts

Dressing:
1 Tbsp. hot water
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. soy sauce
juice from 1/2 a lime
2 cloves garlic, minced

In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the dressing. In a large bowl, toss together all the salad ingredients. Pour over the dressing and let it sit for 20 minutes (or longer) before you eat it.

This salad mostly tastes like fresh Asian salad, because of the herbs and spring onions and so on. But the banana bud tastes a little bit like banana peel does, in a pleasant way. That isn't a great description, I know, but trust me. We served ours with some Vietnamese asparagus & mushrooms with rice noodles. 

Banana Streusel Muffins

When it's not apple, pear, or mandarin season, I like to keep a stash of muffins in the freezer to bring in to work for a mid-morning snack. Andy eats his with his lunch, but I'm usually starving by about 9.30am. I try to hold out till 10 or 10.30 so I don't get hungry for lunch too early, but regardless, I would be nowhere without my morning muffin.

Last weekend I decided, after some serious deliberation, on Banana Streusel Muffins - combining an adaptation of the streusel recipe from the 'Pecan Streusel Coffee Cake' in Urban Vegan with an adaptation of 'Wolffie's Banana Blueberry Muffins' from La Dolce Vegan.

But then, a hiccup. We didn't have enough flour. Andy offered to pick some up on his way home from Bunning's, the hardware store mega-chain.

But then, another hiccup. We remembered the grocery stores don't open till 11am on Sundays. This was at about 9am, and we had people coming over for lunch at 12. I decided to just go to the shop afterwards, but Andy saw my determination  to bake and called his friend Tom, who was coming for lunch, to borrow some flour.

Thanks again, Tom! (I repaid him in a muffin.)

I'm glad we did borrow the flour, because I wouldn't have felt like walking to the store in the afternoon. And these muffins were a delicious success, so it would have been tragic not to make them. Andy and Tom both thought they had apple in them - I guess because the flavours are all typically paired with apple. But just bananas here!

Banana Streusel Muffins

1/2 c. chopped walnuts
1/2 c. raisins
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. flour
3 Tbsp. grapeseed oil

2 c. flour (I used half white and half wholemeal, so I could call them muffins instead of cupcakes and feel like I eat healthy)
1 Tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
3/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. sugar
2/3 c. non-dairy milk
2 lady finger bananas, or 1 large banana (I used bananas from our tree!!)
1 tsp. fresh grated ginger
1/4 c. grapeseed oil
2 Tbsp. molasses

To make the streusel, mix all the ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Then preheat the oven to 190 (375F). Lightly oil a 12 cup muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, and sugar - make sure there are no lumps left. In a jug with a stick blender, or in a proper blender, combine the milk, banana, ginger, oil and molasses and blend until smooth. Add the banana milk to the flour mixture and stir until combined.

Drop spoonfuls of batter into the muffin cups, filling a bit less than half full. Then put a spoonful of streusel mix. Top with another spoonful of muffin batter.

Bake for 22 minutes, give or take a few, until they are golden and cooked through. Probably put your muffin pan on a baking tray, because when I made these, this happened.

Andy seemed to enjoy scraping the hot toffee off the pan and eating it, and after letting the muffins cool for about 20 minutes they came out pretty easily. My advice is to loosen the edges while they are fresh from the oven, but don't take them out until the streusel hardens up a bit - otherwise you will lose your tops!

Bumbu Kacang

In April, Andy went to Bali for a conference. While he was there, he went to a cooking class. His certificate of achievement is still hanging (okay, a bit ironically) on the fridge. He also brought a little recipe book home with him. The class and the book are so not vegan, which Andy says aligns with his experience in Bali overall, but pretty much everything in the world can be veganised, right?

When we harvested a bunch of peanuts, I had a go at veganising the peanut sauce recipe, which we then turned into a sort of curry-satay stirfry-stew kind of thing.

According to the book, this is called Bumbu Kacang. This is my version, veganised. Terribly healthy it ain't, nor will I make any claims on its authenticity. But it was yummy.

150grams raw, unsalted peanuts with the papery bits still on
2 Tbsp. sunflower oil
1/4 cup warm water
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 small, hot chilli, minced
1 tsp. miso paste
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 small tomato
1 tsp. soy sauce
zest from 1 lime
juice from 1/2 a lime

To make the Bumbu Kacang, heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the peanuts in the oil in batches (avoid crowding the pan). When they are just golden brown, remove them with a slotted spoon. In a mini-chopper (our method) or food processor or pestle&mortar, grind the peanuts with the water until finely ground.

Remove the peanuts to a bowl. In the mini chopper, blend the garlic, chilli, miso, and brown sugar until they are a paste. Pulse in the tomato. Stir this into the peanuts along with the soy sauce, lime zest and lime juice. Taste - adjust the flavours as needed to balance sweet, sour, salty and spicy.

At this point you could easily eat this as-is, perhaps as a dip for veggies or as a topping on grilled tofu. But we turned it into a full meal. Cauliflower, capsicum, zucchini and bok choy sauteed together; then the peanut sauce mixed in with a splish of coconut milk. We served it on rice, and topped with fresh coriander and some crunchy fried shallots.

The result was nothing like our usual peanut butter-based satay sauce, but holy pants it was good. Lighter, freshened up by the tomato in the sauce, but still intensely peanutty. A deeply satisfying use for a harvest of peanuts that I painstakingly shelled by hand.

Meyer Lemon Sherbet

In Australia, sherbet is (correct me if I'm wrong) a fizzy powdered candy which I have never tried. In America, sherbet is pronounced like "sherbert" and means a fruity sorbet-style ice cream with a bit of milk in it. It's sort of halfway between ice cream and sorbet. Why it was given the name "sherbe[r]t" is beyond me.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine gave us a big bag of Meyer lemons from her tree. We used them to make lemon & sage burgers, added them to dal, and they appeared in other dishes, too, but we still had a bunch left to use. Andy suggested that we make sorbet. I decided to make it a sherbet, because hey, why not?

I googled some recipes, and then just ended up making my own recipe up as I went, tasting and making sense of things along the way. The end result was really extraordinarily delicious, if I can say that without sounding arrogant - tangy, sweet-tart, creamy, zesty, and refreshing.

Meyer Lemon Sherbet

4 meyer lemons (meyer are sweeter than other lemon varieties; if you don't have these, you may need to add more sugar to taste)
1 c. sugar
400 ml coconut cream
100 ml water
2 Tbsp. corn flour
2 Tbsp. water
1/4 tsp. tumeric (optional)

Carefully zest the lemons, avoiding the white pith. If you have a fancy zester, lucky you! Skip to the next step. If, like me, you use a peeler to get the zest, chop it up as finely as you can get it. Juice the lemons. I had 1 1/2 cups of lemon juice. If your lemons are smaller, maybe use another one, or else try it with less and see if you like the taste. You can always add more later.

In a saucepan, combine the coconut cream, 100ml of water, lemon zest and sugar. Heat over medium until the sugar dissolves. Add the lemon juice. Bring it up to just bubbling, taste it and add more sugar if it is too tart for your liking. Mix the corn flour with 2 Tbsp. of water and pour this into the sherbet mix. Stir it in very well, turn off the heat, and if you want your sherbet to be OMGSOYELLOW add some tumeric. Just a little bit won't make it taste like anything but lemons. Let the mixture cool to room temperature, and then chill it in the fridge until it is very cold.

Churn it in an ice cream maker until it has set. If you have no ice cream maker, try these instructions.

Lemon and Sage Burgers

These patties are a little bit gourmet, in as much as burgers ever can be classy. They're also quick and easy - we had them on a Friday night for dinner, which is usually our laziest night in the kitchen. A bit of forethought is required, unless you use canned beans. The inclusion of lemon was inspired by a bag of Myer Lemons grown by a friend of mine. We happened to have a roasted eggplant in the fridge waiting to be used -- you see, our eggplants remain in high-intensity fruit-production mode, so sometimes we'll throw a whole one on the barbie to use later in the week -- so we turned it into a really nice condiment that really complemented the flavours of the burger.

Lemon and Sage White Bean Burgers

2 cups of cooked cannellini beans, drained
1/4 c. olive oil
juice from 1 lemon
1 tsp. dried sage
1/2 c. polenta (corn meal)
1/2 to 1 c. gluten flour
salt & pepper

I cooked my beans on the weekend and put them in a container with the olive oil, lemon juice and sage, and left them to 'marinate' in the fridge all week. If you're using tinned beans, or just haven't planned ahead, just mix them all in a bowl. When you're ready to make the patties, mash the beans with the olive oil, lemon juice and sage until most of the beans are broken up. Stir in the polenta, and salt and pepper to taste. Then mix in 1/2 c. of gluten flour. Knead for a few minutes, adding more gluten flour if they feel soft. The dough should be pretty sturdy, because these were nice, firm burgers. Form into patties.

Cook on the BBQ, or in a frying pan, or in the oven. We did ours on the barbie, over very low heat. The delicate flavours in these wouldn't taste very good charred, I think, so cook until just lightly browned.

Eggplant mayonnaise
1 medium eggplant, roasted and then cut into chunks.
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. vegan mayo (like Praise 99% fat free, which we used)
salt & pepper

In a blender, food processor or mini chopper, blend up the eggplant chunks with the olive oil and lemon juice until it is pretty smooth. Add vegan mayo and whiz it through to mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

We had our burgers on bread rolls with the eggplant mayo, some malabar spinach from the garden, and cucumber.

Pizza. On the BBQ.

Andy and I love pizza. Since I perfected a crust recipe several years ago (below), Andy has requested pizza aroundabout once a week. We have had some really excellent successes in our time - roasted garlic + nutrtitional yeast "cheesy garlic bread", gourmet-style antipasto pizzas, vegan bacon and pineapple pizzas - but we've recently reached new heights in the pizza stakes.

Enter the BBQ.

I had read, several years ago, an article about cooking pizza on the grill like this. The article talked about putting the dough straight on the grill plate, cooking it briefly, then flipping over to top as the other side of the dough cooked. This could work, but we haven't tried it yet, and I don't know how it would go on a Weber (which cooks hotter than most BBQs).

When Andy's parents parked their caravan in our back yard last May, they bought a pizza stone for their Weber, and we tried it out with pre-purchased crusts. They were good, and friends who have pizza stones say they are really excellent. But our trepidation around pizza stones is that they are rather small, and we like our pizzas rather... large. I suppose we could make many smaller pizzas, but they can only cook one at a time, and also what if the dough is floppy?

Our method is much simpler, and probably means that we still have higher heights to reach. But for now, it's blown our minds enough that we're happy here. Our method involves making the pizza on the pan, like we always have, but cooking it on the Weber, raised up on a trivet (because going straight on the grill would be too direct a heat and would burn the base).

The result is a crispy crunchy base with a still-fluffy crust ring around the edge of the pizza. The whole thing gets a slightly smoky, BBQ flavour. And it only takes 8-10 minutes per pizza, on low heat.

BBQ sauce, fresh pineapple, and vegan bacon bits, with a few mushrooms.

I suppose the most revolutionary aspect of this pizza-making method is that it lets us have pizza in the summer without heating up the house. On a really hot, North Queensland day, you can imagine how important this is. It even encourages us to eat outside, something we normally only do when we have people over.

Pesto, Mushroom and Tomato pizza

Pizza Dough
1 cup of water (usually, + 1 or 2 Tbsp., but play it by feel)
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 c. flour
3 Tbsp. gluten flour
2 and 1/2 tsp. yeast

We make this in the bread maker, just whacking everything in and letting it go, adding a splish splash of water when it looks dry. If you don't have a bread maker, do this in the normal way of making bread. Mix up the water, salt, olive oil, sugar and yeast. Mix the flour and gluten flour together and then mix the dry into the wet with a wooden spoon. When it gets too stiff, mix with your hands, and knead the dough for 10 minutes until it becomes stretchy and smooth. As you knead, add more flour if it is too wet; if it's too dry I like to get my hands wet and knead in more water that way. When it looks like nice dough, put it in an oiled bowl, cover, and let it rise for 60-90 minutes.

At the end of the dough cycle or when the dough has risen in the bowl, punch it down, drop it on the bench, and knead by hand for a minute. Divide it in half (or more, if you want smaller pizzas), form into smooth balls (tuck the rough bits in at the bottom until it's pretty smooth), and let rest on the bench, covered with a tea towel, until you're ready to roll out the pizzas (up to 2 hours, but we usually go 30-60 minutes).

Fitness Friday: Eating for Exercise

I'm stealing the idea for Fitness Fridays from Kari.

My 2013 resolutions included some fitness goals. I have been travelling fairly well - I've done push-ups every week, pretty much always cycle to work, and run a few times a week. But all this exercise makes me really hungry. And I'm doing it to be fit, rather than to lose weight, so I haven't been cutting calories. But I was not really very strategic about my eating until fairly recently. Reading Bianca's posts about the Thrive Forward cleanse got me thinking about it. I signed up for the site, but didn't participate really. What it gave me, instead, was some ideas about the most efficient ways to fuel myself.

So now, I pop a Direct Fuel Bite before my run. I shape them into balls and store in the fridge, so I can grab one quickly as I blearily put on my shoes and get Tika's lead so very early in the morning. Before discovering Direct Fuel Bites, I ate nothing before running. These are made with dates and coconut oil (and I add crystallised ginger to mine, which is yummy), and supposedly the glucose in the dates gets turned into fuel pretty much immediately, and the fatty acids from the coconut oil are another source of quick energy. I do notice a difference - I feel less tired by the end of my (still short) run.

Straight after my run, I drink plenty of water while one of us gets breakfast together. I tend to have granola with soy milk, which is fairly high in protein thanks to okara, seeds & nuts, simple carbs thanks to dried fruit, and complex carbs thanks to oats and other grains. So I get an immediate re-fuel, as well as more long-term, low-GI energy. To make it more filling, I usually top with chia goo (1 tsp. of chia seeds with about 1 Tbsp. of hot water, let sit for 3 or 4 minutes) and fresh fruit if we have any.

Or I have a smoothie. I make mine filling by including oats, which I soak in a bit of water or soy milk in the blender jug overnight. In addition to that, I either have peanut butter & banana, or tropical fruit (whatever is on hand) with almond meal for protein.

But even with a filling breakfast, I get hungry again in the mid-morning. Andy and I try to keep bananas around for morning tea, and if I'm really starving I'll have my banana with a rice cake and almond butter, which I keep in my office for hunger-related emergencies.

If, for some reason, we don't have bananas (or other snack fruit) on hand, we put a batch of muffins in the freezer. They stay super fresh, and thaw out by the time we're hungry for little lunch. Since beginning to exercise more consistently, I have tried to maximise the nutrition in these snacks. This recipe for banana muffins that I made last week isn't the healthiest ever - I used white flour and sugar - but they are high in protein, oil-free, and most importantly, delicious. The recipe is very loosely based on Dynise's Blueberry-Banana Bread from Urban Vegan, but only very loosely.

High-Protein Banana Muffins

2 tsp. chia seeds
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. bicarb soda
1 1/2 c. plain flour
1/4 c. quinoa flakes
3/4 c. sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp. rum
1/2 c. wet okara (or sub yogurt, or mashed silken tofu)
3 large bananas, mashed
1/3 c. soy milk
3/4 c. chopped nuts (I used half macadamia, half walnuts)

In a large bowl, stir together the dry ingredients. In a separate, smaller bowl, mix up the mashed bananas with the rum, okara and soy milk. Add this to the dry ingredients and stir until just mixed. Spoon into lightly oiled muffin cups and bake at 180 for 28-30 minutes. Let them cool in the pan for a minute or two, and then carefully take them out. Cool fully on a rack, and then (if you want to keep them super fresh for up to a month) put them in a bag and freeze. Take out one muffin at least 30 minutes before you want to eat it.

I'm still, really, an exercise novice. I'm no endurance athlete, and I run in a week what a lot of people do in a day. But even a little bit of proper exercise is super duper good for you, especially when it's matched with good, nutritious food.

Pumpkin Curry

Nacho loves pumpkin. Her love has evolved into ever more invasive practices. When she was a wee little kitten, she tried her hardest to get into any cooked pumpkin we had around. As she grew, she began to recognise the smell of raw pumpkin, and jumped up to investigate whenever any was cut or cooked. More recently, she has begun eating the uncooked inside bits, leaving the seeds behind.

But, if you can believe it, she's gotten even more sneaky & cheeky still.

A week or so ago, when Andy was back at work but I wasn't yet, I did some dinner prep in the late afternoon. I peeled and chopped a pumpkin, which I would turn into a curry. As I worked, Nacho helped herself to the pumpkin guts - as she does. When my pumpkin was chopped, I put it on a plate, covered it with a tea towel to keep the hungry kitty out of it, and then went outside to water the garden. In the meantime, Andy came home, and we were outside for quite a while.

When I came in, I stepped on something squishy in the kitchen. It was a piece of half-eaten pumpkin. I looked at the bench, where my pumpkin-plate was. The tea towel had been pushed aside (with a contemptuous laugh, I imagine). And instead of the full plate I had left, there was this:

Just on the other side of the counter, the culprit was lounging without a hint of remorse.

When I questioned her about the missing pumpkin, her tail started to flick in annoyance.

She gave me her best Julie Bishop-stare, and demanded that I get the hell out of her face (unless I had some cooked pumpkin to give her, please).

I did what any self-respecting cat person would do, and (once photos were taken), did what Nacho told me.  I got on with cooking, and despite having less pumpkin than I started with, we got a pretty good curry out of the deal.

Pumpkin Curry
1 small onion, diced
3 or 4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 small pumpkin, peeled and cubed (or less, if your cat gets into it)
2 potatoes, cubed
3 Tbsp. curry paste - we used tandoori
1 can of full fat coconut milk
1/2 c. diced tomatoes (for us, this was the leftovers of a tin)
1/2 c. snake beans, chopped (use any green veggie - we had snake beans that needed using from the garden)
1 c. cannellini beans, drained & rinsed

In a pot, saute the onion and garlic with oil until they are soft. Add the pumpkin and potatoes and stir them around for a few minutes. Add the curry paste, stir it up until everything is coated in it, and then add the coconut milk and tomatoes. Bring it up to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer for half an hour or so, until the potatoes and the pumpkin are tender. Add the green veggie and the beans, let it cook for another few minutes. Season to taste, eat with rice.

Mochi - without a microwave

I discovered mochi by chance in Hong Kong in 2011, and Andy and I both dug it. Not enough to, like, pine for it or anything - I wasn't having dreams about mochi. But I would have liked to have some more. Then in September and October, while perusing The New Scoop (which I reviewed here) I saw the chapter on ice cream mochi. The author said mochi was just not possible without a microwave or a mochi machine, but instead of letting it go, I took that on as a challenge. I googled, and found James & Matt's mochi post the most helpful - they mentioned cooking mochi dough on the stove top, and even though it wasn't a part of their tutorial, just knowing it was possible was enough for me. I got some glutinous rice flour, and then eventually got around to making it. It took me two tries to get it right, using two very different methods.

First Attempt

The first time I tried it out, I used the recipe for mochi dough from The New Scoop, because I had a hard copy I could keep on the kitchen bench while I worked. My only variation was to cook the mochi in a bowl over a pot of simmering water, hoping that would do the trick.

I double-boiled for 10 minutes and thought that must surely be enough - the dough was getting dry around the edges, and the consistency was different.

So I took it off the heat and did the rest of the work. I kneaded my dough, briefly. I cut it into pieces, formed balls, and filled them with a mixture of rice bubbles, tahini and toasted sesame seeds.

All the while, I thought that all the dramatic explanations of how to make mochi, with dire warnings about hot lava-esque dough that sticks to you and itself and everything, were a little over the top. Sure, the dough was hot, but it was a bit easy to work with, really!

The ease which marked my mochi experience was the first indicator that I had done it wrong. Biting into them was my second clue. Instead of sticky, chewy, gluey dumplings, these were soft and doughy. The flavour was a little bit chalky - not unpleasant, but similar to icing sugar.

Second Attempt

A week or so later, I decided to try again. This time, instead of assuming a double boiler would work without actually looking up a specific stove-top recipe, I did a more thorough search. I found this gem of a video.

Short summary: instead of cooking the dough and then forming dumplings, this recipe turns the process upside down - steam the pre-formed dumplings. Revolutionary.

So I did! The only change I made to the recipe was to use corn flour rather than wheat starch, which may have been a mistake - these mochi did not stay soft at all.

Mochi
1 1/4 c. boiling water
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. corn flour
2 1/2 c. glutinous rice flour
filling of your choice

In a big bowl, dissolve sugar in boiling water. Add flours and mix them in. Knead for a minute or two, until the dough resembles play dough in texture.

Break off small pieces of dough, roll into balls, and flatten them. Place your filling in the middle and then pull the dough around the filling, sealing it in.

Place the finished dumpling on an oiled steamer pan. When the pan is full, steam the mochi over gently boiling water for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, make the rest of your mochi.

I used two fillings: in some, peanut butter mixed with icing sugar; in others, pieces of mango. The peanut butter, of course, melted as a result of being steamed for 10 minutes. So instead of nice, round mochi dumplings, I had flattish, blobby things.

Take the mochi off the steamer tray immediately, trying not to break them. This is where I got to experience the joys of molten, sticky mochi dough. A few busted open, so I ate them right away.

Put the (unbusted) mochi straight from the steamer into a container of coconut (or sesame seeds, crushed nuts, icing sugar, etc) and shake them around to coat.

 Eat them within 12 hours. Fridging them made them firmer, but still chewy and nice - on the first day. By the second day they were hard from the fridge, and reasonable (but not great) when they came up to room temperature. By the third day, they were practically inedible. In future, I will cut the recipe down to make only what we can eat in the same day. This batch made 24, which in hindsight is only worth making to bring to a party or something.

Mango mochi looks a little bit like a soft-boiled egg.

So the form-then-steam method is the way to go for those who, like me, don't own a microwave. Or for those who don't want to knead and mould molten hot mochi dough.  It won't work at all for ice cream mochi, and isn't the best for runnier fillings like peanut butter, but I think I'll try mixing the nut butter with some crumbs of something to see if that firms it up.

Yummy chewy mochi. 

Mango Mousse Tart

The other night Andy and I had dinner with some friends, one of whom has very recently had to adopt a low GI diet. We had already collectively decided to BBQ some tofu for dinner, which was virtually sugar- and carb-free, and our friends were bringing side dishes, but I wanted to do something more creative than just cut-up fruit for dessert. Partially because I cook for people to show I love them, and partially because I love a cooking challenge.

I did some googling, and found that most of the recipes that came up for low GI desserts were fruit & yoghurt concoctions, or involved stevia, gluten-free flour mixes, and other things I don't have on hand.  I forget how the inspiration struck, but I thought about a fruit tart. I vaguely remembered cooking an oat-based crust from the Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook, and when I looked at the recipe saw that it would need only a little tweaking to make it good and low GI. For the filling, I thought back to a no-bake fruit tart I made several years ago, and decided that some of our steady supply of mangoes would be a good fruit to use.

The results were good, and mainly low GI (anything below 55 is considered low, and 56-70 is considered medium).The tart filling was velvety and gently set, so that it was still a bit wobbly, and was offset nicely by the nutty, biscuit-like base. The only thing I might do differently next time I make this is to quickly blend up the oats, so they aren't so whole. Either way, this was really delicious, and a great way to use mangoes. Might be a nice alternative to some of the ultra-rich desserts people are used to filling up on at this time of year!

Mango Mousse Tart
Crust (adapted from Granola Nut Crust in Ultimate Uncheese)

1 c. rolled oats (GI 51)
1/2 c. desiccated coconut (GI 45)
1/2 c. almond meal (GI 0)
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 c. sunflower oil
1/4 c. maple syrup (GI 54)

Heat the oven to 180 (350F). In a bowl, mix the oats, coconut, almond meal, ginger and salt. In a jug, combine the oil and maple syrup and stir, then pour this over the dry ingredients. Mix till combined and then press into a pie plate or springform pan. Bake for 10 minutes until just browned. Cool completely.

Filling
3 mangoes (GI 41-60, depending on ripeness, variety, etc)
juice from 1 lime
1 Tbsp. agar flakes
2 Tbsp. water
1/2 c. silken tofu (GI 0)

Put the agar flakes and water into a small dish and set aside for about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, blend together the mango flesh and lime juice until smooth. In a small saucepan, bring the fruit puree up to a boil. Add the agar and boil rapidly for 10 minutes, stirring pretty constantly to avoid mango splashing everywhere. Remove from heat, add tofu and blend until smooth. Pour into pre-baked crust and put in the fridge until set, about 2 hours.

Sneaky Nuts*

In the first few weeks of moving into our house earlier this year, one of the things we planted in the garden was peanuts. We bought a bag full of raw peanuts from a local farmer at the Sunday market and planted some of the nuts.  

For us, peanuts were a slow-growing, very small plant. I didn't hold out great hopes for what they would produce. Even if we didn't get any nuts out of the plants, I figured the nitrogen they produce would be good for conditioning the soil, and the plants would make a good addition to compost. 

Well, we needed to dig up our peanut plants recently because Andy wanted to expand and edge the garden bed, and we were very pleasantly surprised to find all of these sneaky peanuts. Then I read a blog post on Food Feud about spiced nuts, and knew just what to turn these into.

I pulled them off the plant, rinsed off the dirt, and put them onto dehydrator trays to dry out. Then I shelled them - which took ages and made my fingers sore. Then, I roasted them up. In a 160 degree oven (that's about 325F), I toasted them on a baking tray, shaking every now and then, until they smelled nice and started to look toasty. While they were in the oven, I melted together a tablespoon of nuttlex margarine, a tablespoon of brown sugar, two teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of chilli powder, and a handful - maybe two tablespoons - of fresh thyme leaves (also from our garden). When the nuts were done toasting, I dumped them into a bowl and poured the melty butter-sugar yumminess over and stirred and stirred.

When these cool, they stay sticky. They're sweet, and herby, and then the sneaky chilli powder hits you in the back of the throat. They're all around delicious, and great to have on hand at this snacky time of year.

*If you don't get easily offended, and don't know the Sneaky Nuts reference, here is my cultural reference.