gado gado

Gado gado is an Indonesian dish, thick with peanut sauce and raw vegetables and lontong and tofu and it is super delicious. It is popular as a meal, or as just another dish in a long meal. It is also very popular in Malaysia, known as either gado gado or in its variation as pasembor. Pasembor is usually identical to gado gado, but might include yams and be made using groundnuts. It is still super delicious, either way!



gado gado

This is a relatively uncomplicated recipe, and though it does involve trying to do three things at once, it is over quite quickly. As there are so many elements, I've broken this recipe down in to parts: peanut sambal, lontong, and assembling the gado gado. Lontong is one of my very favourites, compressed rice; it is an essential part of satay sticks, and gado gado. The recipe I have included here is cheating, but I am usually too lazy to find pandan leaves.

peanut sambal
quarter of a cup vegetable oil
one and a half cups of raw peanuts
five fresh red chillis, sliced and deseeded
1 teaspoon tamarind juice
2 tablespoons grated palm sugar
5 lime kaffir leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced or diced
1 tablespoon dark soy
1 tablespoon kecap manis
one(ish) cup of water

In some vegetable oil, stirfry the peanuts for about four minutes. Be careful not to burn the peanuts, though you have some leeway. Use your wok spatula to lift and drain the peanuts - if you don't know how to do this, just use a slotted spoon. Set aside. If there is an excessive amount of oil left in the wok, and there probably will be, remove some, until only two tablespoons of oil are left. Add in the chillis, tamarind juice, palm sugar, garlic and the lime kaffir leaves. Stirfry on medium heat for two or three minutes, then add a quarter of a cup of water, and keep bubbling and tossing for another minute. Remove from heat. After the peanuts have cooled a little (five to ten minutes will be plenty), combine the chilli mixture (minus the lime kaffir leaves) with the peanuts in a blender or a mortar and pestle, and pound or process until paste. Gradually (as in, a quarter of a cup at a time) add about one cup of water, as well as the kecap manis and the dark soy.

lontong
Cook some long grain rice in your usual way, but add an extra half again the amount of water. Line a long, flat dish with cling-wrap, and scoop the rice in. Press flat. Each piece should ideally be two or three centimetres in height, to give you some idea of the size of the dish you will need. Cover with a clean towel, and layer heavy things on top of it, such as containers with food, and place flat in the fridge. Leave to set for six or seven hours. When it is firm, take out of the fridge, gently lift from the container, and cut in to cubes. You can serve this with gado gado or satay, it goes unbelievably well with a warm satay sauce.

If you are serving gado gado as a meal, you will want half a cup of uncooked rice per person when making the lontong.

gado gado
1 potato
1 carrot
a handful or two of snow peas
a cup of bean sprouts
some doufu puffs/fried tofu
lontong
a whole lot of peanut sauce
a small amount of cauliflower

Boil and cube the potato. Julienne the carrot, top and tail the snow peas, and blanch. Cut the cauliflower in to tiny flowers (you can serve this raw or boiled). Prepare bean sprouts, and lay out on a serving dish with potato, snow peas, carrot, cauliflower and doufu. Smother with peanut sambal.

You can sub in and out vegetables as it takes your fancy, I like to use chinese cabbage and capsicum too.

mushroom stroganoff

This was great, with a rich mushroom flavour and huge chunks of mushroom. Cooked by D, based on this recipe from yeah that vegan shit.




mushroom stroganoff
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons nuttelex (or vegan margarine)
3 cloves garlic, minced
shake or two of salt, a shake of pepper
dash of dried parsley, dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon chives
2 big field mushrooms, cut in to eighths (like a pizza)
3 or 4 largeish whatever mushrooms are there, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup soy milk
half a cup of white wine


about 400gm of fettucine

method
Heat a little olive oil, and add in the flour, stirring on a medium heat for a few minutes. Melt in nuttelex, add garlic, onion, salt and pepper, and keep stirring for a few more minutes. Add everything else (except the fettucine), bring to a boil, and reduce heat to simmer with the lid on for about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the fettucine. Serve hot!

lamingtons

After the success of lamington cupcakes, I thought I would turn my hand to actual lamingtons to take to a picnic. After spending the early evening at the Cap S, and a late night visit to Planet Books before walking home, late Friday night I prepared the sponge, using the same recipe as previous, and pouring it into a square pan greased with nuttelex. I also put down some baking paper across the bottom. I left the sponge to cool overnight, covered by a clean tea towel.

Early Saturday morning, before I wandered in to Northbridge for my Chinese class, I sliced the sponge into sixteen squares, and prepared the chocolate dip. Rather than the spread I used for the cupcakes, this time I made a very watery concoction, definitely something one could describe as a liquid rather than icing. I’m not sure of the exact proportions, but it was something like two cups of icing sugar, four teaspoons of cocoa, and a quarter(ish) of a cup of hot water. More chocolate water than chocolate icing, definitely. Again, I left each lamington to soak for several seconds, coating well each side in chocolate, before dipping into the bed of coconut.

This recipe is not yet perfect, but it is definitely adequate for those vegans longing for lamingtons, and I (and D, and our friend Simon) were quite happy to nom several on Saturday afternoon.

blue waters cafe, cottesloe

Yesterday D and I met up with Amber at Cottesloe Beach. Sadly, after two days of stifling warm weather where I desperately wanted to head down to the beach, Sunday morning was clear and bright but at a mere 25ish C, nowhere near warm enough to jump into the water.



Instead, having not yet had breakfast, we wandered across the road to Blue Waters Cafe, where D and I both ordered the vegetarian big breakfast sans eggs and mushrooms. This usually comes with eggs, mushrooms, bread, baked beans, tomatoes and potato and spring onion rosti. Ordinarily D and I are all over the mushrooms, but our waitperson kindly let us know that the mushrooms were marinated in butter, and we swapped them out for some very delicious avocado.

D's coffee was fine, but slow to arrive – after our breakfasts. Amber ordered something very egg based, which she said was great. Highlights were probably the rostis, the avocado and the ciabatta bread, which was excellent.

Blue Waters Cafe
110 Marine Parade
Cottesloe

sun-dried tomato bread

It was pleasing, after the bread-failure of late January, to have a bread success. Now that I've seen a successful bread-rising, I'm pretty stoked - it sort of bubbles, and when you punch it down it really does deflate! This is all very exciting.



Lots of people offered advice, which was awesome. This is how I made it this time, but I will probably add some more tomatoes next time.

sun-dried tomato bread

ingredients
2 and a bit cups of plain flour
2 teaspoons of instant yeast
2 teaspoons of caster sugar
1 shake of salt
1 cup warm water
a small handful of sundried tomatoes, cut small
some dried rosemary

method
Sift together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Make a well in the middle, and pour in the warm water.

Because the water shouldn't be too hot, I boiled water and then left it to cool for ages before adding it to the dry ingredients.

Mix together, then on a lightly floured surface, knead for ten to twelve minutes, adding a little more flour if necessary. Leave to rise in an oiled bowl, covered with a tea towel or similar. It will rise and rise! I left it for about two hours.

After two hours, punch the dough down. Ridiculous but true! It just deflates. Flour your surface and knead the dough, adding the sun-dried tomatoes. You may need to add more flour if there is too much oil in the tomatoes. Shake in some dried rosemary.

Brush a pan with oil from the sun-dried tomatoes. Shape the dough into a round, and place on the tray. Glaze with a little more oil or some milk, and bake at 190C for about forty minutes.

spinach and mushroom pie

I am quite excited about this pie, because it's sort of like eating spanakopita! This recipe was inspired by one I found at vegan visitor, which looked good but was not quite what I was after. I served this with a side of smashed potatoes, roughly following a recipe I found at vegan yum yum.



spinach and mushroom pie

ingredients
lots of mushrooms, about three giant handfuls, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
one and a half packs of baby spinach (two bunches normal spinach, shredded, will also be okay)
half a dozen basil leaves
shake of dried rosemary
salt and pepper
small handful of pinenuts
some black olives (sliced)
some silken firm tofu (that's one block if you're buying it in a 375gish pack from Coles/IGA/Woolies, or two thirds of the whole box if you're buying it from your local Chinese grocer in a takeaway container)
ten long sheets of filo pastry

method
In a little olive oil, fry the mushrooms and the garlic until the mushrooms are soft and delicious looking. Add the spinach, olives and pine nuts, and stir around until the spinach has wilted. Remove from heat. Attempt to drain any excess liquid without losing anything important. After it has cooled a bit, mash in the tofu with the basil leaves, a tiny bit of rosemary, and some salt and pepper. Leave to cool a little bit more.

Grease a suitably sized baking tin. I used a square 20cm x 20cm (ish) cake tin. Take five sheets, fold together in half, and line the bottom and sides of the tin with the pastry. Scoop the filling in to the centre, and cover with the remaining five pieces of pastry, also folded over. Tuck the sides as appropriate. Score the top, through to the filling, with a knife three or four times, and brush with a little nuttelex or soy milk.

Bake 175C for about 40 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes before serving.

black bottom blondies from my sweet vegan

On Saturday we went to the Swan Aid fundraising picnic, and as I knew I would be surrounded by a sea of meat-eaters (and D + Simon) I wanted to bake something delicious and sweet to bring, as well as an abbreviated version of our usual picnic fare of potato salad, hummous and fruit. A quick flip through My Sweet Vegan led me to the delicious sounding but oddly named black bottom blondies. I couldn't work out what the name meant, but I was intrigued enough to try baking them. Later, D pointed out they were 'blondies' as the opposite to 'brownies,' and it all made sense.



I made very few alterations to this recipe. As always I didn't really measure it very accurately, and I only approximately converted things - it called for 6 ounces of vanilla soy yoghurt, which I decided would be about half a cup of soy milk mixed through with three spoons of apple sauce. I also baked it for much longer, finding it required about 45 minutes (as opposed to the recommended 28-35), though that could just be my crazy oven.

These were delicious. They were really easy and they look impressive because of the colour shift, and I'll definitely be making them again.

a weekend of mexican-inspired dinners

Prompted by Lindy Loo's lentil tacos, I attempted some tacos of my own. They were good, but chewing away, D commented, "they're tasty, but they're not really Mexican-y;" and I realised the reason for that was I had forgotten the cumin. Woo go me. But they were still good! Topped them with some lettuce, tomato, grated carrot, and avocado.



Got home after a D-family afternoon tea, had a bit of the lentil taco mixture left over and thought I'd just whip up some sort of rice to go with it. Originally the idea had been to use the lettuce leaves to make some sort of san choy bao thing, but the lettuce had frozen in the fridge, and rinsing them turned them in to tissue, so we just ate the rice and lentils on their own. The rice was very quick, and very tasty, I suspect it will be making a reappearance in our lives as a fast dinner.

I'm not really sure what to call this. I googled 'mexican rice' to see what came up, but the internet was not as helpful as I had hoped it would be, and if someone published a 'chinese rice' recipe I'd be all WHAT? so I don't know. I need to learn more about Mexican food, it's not incredibly common in Perth, perhaps my local library will be able to help me out tomorrow. Or I can flex my googlefu a little more.



Mexican(ish) Rice

ingredients
1/4 red onion, diced
1/2 carrot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 capsicum, diced
1/2 tsp cumin
ground pepper
1 cup long grain rice
2 cups stock
1 tomato
1 sprig spring onion

method
In some oil, fry onion, carrot, capsicum, cumin and garlic, until onion starts to soften. Add rice, stir through until covered, then add the stock and pepper. Bring to boil, then reduce to low, cover with lid and simmer. After fifteen minutes, remove from heat, add spring onion (chopped roughly), and stand for two or three minutes. Serve hot.

scrambled tofu from vegan with a vengeance

I got home late on Thursday night, not finishing up at work until after 2100. The work was interesting, we're running a series of community education workshops, and it's great that we've got all these people interested in sustainable living and whatnot, but after a pretty busy week it was slightly vexing to be at work early and not on the train home until late. The train home was pretty exciting though, lots of people and interesting conversations to overhear and I was reading a really odd book (Londonstani by Gautam Malkani).



By the time I got home, though it wasn't that far on the train, I was tired and didn't feel like cooking, just eating. Fortunately, D was in the kitchen, poised to try cooking scrambled tofu, inspired by our awesome tofu experiences in Sydney last week.

D used the recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance. We still haven't found any nutritional yeast, so we had to omit that from the recipe. I felt like the recipe could do with some more spicy, and also perhaps we should have added a little more water. Overall it was tasty, though, and I look forward to more experiments in scrambled tofu, now I've overcome my aversion.

mushroom jiaozi

Flush with delicious victory after our visit to Bodhi, on Tuesday D thought that some sort of mushroom dumpling should be attempted. We were pushed for time, as Tuesday evenings see us swing dancing, so we needed to have finished eating early. This made dumpling making a delightful time-based challenge, though did sort of take the fun out of what is usually a leisurely thing to make.



mushroom jiaozi

This recipe is for jiaozi only, you can serve them any way you like. I like to add half a dozen, along with some rice noodles, bok choi and spring onions, into a lightly spiced ginger broth.

ingredients
one cup champignon mushrooms
handful fresh enoki mushrooms
one half square of firm tofu
dumpling wrappers
three shakes of dark soy sauce
dash of ground pepper
one clove of garlic
some spring onions
half a cup of water chestnuts

method
Dice mushrooms and garlic finely. Fry in a little peanut oil for two or three minutes. Meanwhile, finely chop the water chestnuts, and add to wok, as well as dark soy and ground pepper. Drop in a shake of water, and put lid on wok. Leave to steam for two or three minutes, then add chopped spring onions and chopped enoki.

Mash tofu. Combine well with mushroom mixture, and leave to cool. When the mushroom mixture is mostly cool or room temperature, take one dumpling sheet at a time and put a teaspoon of mixture in the centre. Run a damp finger (have a little bowl of water handy for this) around the edge, like an envelope, then fold one side over to meet the other, and press to seal. You should have a semi-circle of deliciousness. Repeat until mixture is used up, or you get bored.

I like to steam my jiaozi, which I do by laying a sheet of baking paper across a bamboo steamer, and set out as many jiaozi as will fit without smushing together. Fill the wok with two or so cups of water, and when it is boiling put the covered steamer in the wok, and cover with wok lid. Leave to steam for about twelve minutes.

Alternatively, you can boil them, until the jiaozi are floating.

mother chu's vegetarian restaurant

This is the last of my Sydney reviews. Thank you so much to everyone who left suggestions for me, they were greatly appreciated!

We arrived in Sydney just after midday, and having deposited our luggage at the hotel (Medina Central, fantastic location, awesome rooms, don't accidentally steal from the mini bar like I did) we wandered down George St to sate my desire to throw myself into the loving book shelves of Kinokuniya. We weren't there long, however, before we started getting really, really hungry. C and N wandered off, claiming vego food would not sustain them,* whilst D, E and I went in search of Mother Chu's Vegetarian Restaurant.

Mother Chu's is a tiny restaurant on Pitt Street. The menu is filled with delights and their mock fish comes out in the shape of a fish. The items on the menu are reasonably priced, with each of our mains costing about $10.

D opted for the chili noodle claypot, which was spicy but delicious. E accidentally ordered too much food, ending up with the avocado and corn soup, which was odd but tasty, and a cashew rice made with brown rice, which was awesomely flavoursome.

I ordered the wonton noodle soup, which was just the right amount of noodle, vegetable and wonton and I ate the whole thing, and then proceeded to roll out of there, committing to a stately waddle back in to town, on our pilgrimage to the Apple store.



*they went to HJ's instead

Mother Chu's Vegetarian Restaurant
367 Pitt Street
Sydney
Open 1200-1500 (mon-fri) and 1700-2200 (some other days...)

green palace, newtown (sydney)

Late Friday night, after shenanigans with plumbers, we headed on out to Newtown (woo!) to Green Palace, which Alysia had found in the Good Eats Guide. We decided a Thai vegan restaurant was a possibility for a gluten-free meal, and I haven't heard from either B or Alysia that there was gluten-related illness afterwards, so yay! (Also the internet tells me explicitly that Green Palace does cater for gluten-free)



We were incredibly indecisive, unsure of what to order and uncharacteristically unable to come to a decision, so we started with the delightful and familiar, spring rolls, which were crispy and tasty, perfectly serviceable spring rolls.



B, D and I shared a panang curry and a pad see eu. It was the best pad see eu I've ever had, for serious. It had just the right amount of sauce, and wide, thick noodles and perfectly cooked vegetables and I loved it. Alysia ordered another one of the curries, allegedly most of their curries are gluten free.



We rounded out the meal with a couple of serves of fried banana and icecream (with sprinkles!). The icecream was not great, with that watery aftertaste, but the fried banana was pretty tasty.



Splitting the bill came to about $25 per person, which is not bad for a Friday night out.

Green Palace
182 King St
Newtown

Bodhi in the Park, Sydney

It has been years since I last went to yum cha. Similarly it has also been years for D, whose attempts at yum cha in Tassie two weeks ago were foiled by a closed yum cha restaurant, so it was with not a small amount of excitement that we ventured forth to Bodhi in the Park.



It was slightly difficult to find, located as it was underneath where I thought College Park was located, and lacking any useful signs. Wander down the stairs, away from College St, towards the smell of chlorine and the splashes, and turn left. It is hidden there amongst the trees and under the walkways.

The menu is extensive, though not as extensive as I had hoped it would be, lacking my very favourite type of dim sum, chee cheong fun (and the related cha siu chee cheong fun). It is also expensive, coming to a total of about $65.00 for the two of us. The food was however quite tasty.



We started with a deep fried spinach roll, not exactly traditional dim sum but still pretty good. The spinach was complimented by I think almond flakes and tofu. We followed this with a curry bun, a new taste sensation for D, who has not had much experience with the squishy sugary bun and savoury filling phenomenon so common through Malaysia, and easily experienced (by non-vegans) at a range of chain bakeries such as bread top, bread box, etc (which I notice has moved in to Sydney).



The curry bun was excellent. This was followed by deep fried sweet potato squishy things, which were delicious but gooey and I could feel my arteries clogging, as it were. The sticky rice was okay, and being served on a tomato quarter was a nice touch, but nothing spectacular.



The cha siu bao, another of my favoured treats, was tasty. We rounded it off with some spicy noodles, which were good but definitely far, far too much on top of everything else.

As we sat there, unable to move, we picked up a little fruit bowl, as we hadn’t had any fruit all weekend, and in the hopes it would help us feel better after all of that deliciousness.



Eventually we stirred and went for a wander through the Botanical Gardens, walking very slowly and spending a lot of time sitting around, trying to force our bodies to metabolise faster.



I love the Chinese style, tiny dishes one by one, elongating the meal and picking and picking. Yum cha is that style taken to its optimum, the tiniest dishes ever and oh deliciousness. We have another dim sum excursion scheduled in March, when we will be venturing to Box Hill, and I am absolutely looking forward to it (and have high hopes for chee cheong fun). In the meantime, though, I am considering a dim sum party in my home. Om nom nom.


Bodhi in the Park
Cook and Phillip Park
(beneath the forecourt of St Mary’s Cathedral)
College Street
Sydney

naked espresso, newtown (sydney)

Wandering back from Green Palace the previous night, D spotted the Basil Pizza / Naked Espresso sign, and on Saturday morning, after an excellent sleep in, we walked up to Naked Espresso to partake of vegan breakfast. It was amazing, I cannot recommend Naked Espresso highly enough. The food was fantastic. The service was excellent. The owner(?) Charles was delightful, chatty and friendly and helpful, weaving the King St traffic to show us across to Vegan Choice (a delicatessen with tofu icecream and vegan cheesecake, which I was sadly too full to consume) and making us try the delicious soy milk Naked Espresso uses in their coffee machine.

Naked Espresso shares premises with Basil Pizza, making it vegan breakfast bar by morning, and vegan-friendly pizza bar by night. I wish I'd had an opportunity to try the pizza, if the delights of the morning were anything to go by.



Tempted by the pancakes, I was nonetheless swayed by the scrambled tofu, simply because I've never before tried scrambled tofu. It was delicious, slightly curried and served with a hashbrown, a tomato, baked beans and two slices of sour dough bread. The tofu wasn't great cold but it was fantastic hot, and I cleaned up my whole plate. D ordered the vegan Aussie brekkie (mushies, tomatoes, baked tofu, spinach, hashbrowns, baked beans and sourdough toast), not even noticing that the entire menu was vegan!



Later, incredibly stuffed but happy to sit around, we chatted with Charles' five year old daughter ("What are you made of?" "I'm made of vegetables!") and overheard very interesting vegan-related things, like why we might have to stop drinking Vitasoy and the availability of vegan marshmallows.



Finally, we purchased two pies, the outer shells of which were definitely not gluten-free but whose insides apparently were, even though they were made from fake meat. We ate these much later in the day, after going to see Top Gear, and they were delicious.

The menu prices were average for breakfast (at least average for a Perth breakfast!), $10-$15 for a serve. Several gluten-free items were on the menu. Definitely A++ would nom again (and I recommend it to all of your friends) - if it had been closer to the hotel, I would have nommed again before we left. Thanks to everyone who mentioned Naked Espresso, it was totally worth the walk. ZB also reviewed it on a visit in January here, if you need more convincing.



Naked Espresso
126 King Street
Newtown

fundraiser bbq for the victorian bushfire relief effort

I have many Sydney related things to talk about, but first (and still food related):

There is going to be a bbq event this Saturday evening (the 14th) to raise funds for the relief effort for the bushfires in Victoria.

It will be at the picnic area at the South end of the South Perth Esplanade (access from Ray or Mends street and turn right), 1600 onwards. Non-alcoholic beverages will be provided. Please bring your own food (I suspect everyone else will be loading up with meat :o( ), and a donation. Contacts are Jaunita Landéesse (0439354992 / transcendancing@gmail.com) or Grant Watson (0430223604 / fanboy@gmail.com)

All funds will be donated to the Red Cross 2009 Victorian bushfire Fund.

You can find more details on the fires and the things that you can do, if you are so inclined, here and here.

Yee Sang at Lotus

In further CNY news, went to Lotus last night where we finally had Yee Sang, it being our last opportunity for this CNY. Yee Sang has a funny taste when you're eating but the most delicious aftertaste, and it's crunchy and delicious. And tossing it is pretty fun.



Yee Sang is made on the table, a large plate of shredded vegetables (and, traditionally, shredded fish) in the centre as a variety of sauces and condiments are poured over the top. Everyone then uses their chopsticks (the use of chopsticks is non-optional, no hands, no forks) to toss the salad together. It is customary to toss as high as possible, because the higher you toss, the greater your fortunes will be, as you court abundance.



Following the yee sang we had some char kuay teow (hardly a CNY noodle) and an array of delicious mock meats, cha siew and kapitan and the Sichuan chicken, which had cashews and was quite tasty. D's new favourite appears to be the chicken satay entree, which we discovered last Saturday when we tried the small banquet, and D insisted on ordering again just four days later.


Lotus Vegetarian Restaurant
Unit 1, 220 James St
Northbridge

tak chee house, northbridge

Tak Chee House is all delicious Penang hawker style, from the plastic furniture to the muggy, tiny interior, and the menus using Hokkien and English. The menu is a mixture of hawker rice and noodles favourites; mee goreng, ha mee, kuay teow, rices, etc. My mum was so excited, the first thing she declared was that she'd be ordering ice kachang, and it was massive and allegedly delicious (and she would like to recommend it to all your non-vegan friends on these warm summer days). I would like to recommend the fresh lemon ice tea for these warm summer days, which is vegan and pretty cool (hah!).



D and I decided to order and share a char kuay teow and mee goreng.

The char kuay teow was fantastic! The wok hei was so tasty, and there were lots of fresh vegetables, the noodles were freshly cooked and it was really tasty. Sometimes when you order 'noodle dish x, strict vegetarian' you can get some pretty boring noodles, but this one they replaced all the meat with a multitude of delicious vegetables, and it had a really great flavour. A++ will definitely order again (and my mum was coveting it).



The mee goreng had that classic tomato flavour, and I loved the addition of baby corn. I would probably order this again, it was pretty tasty.

Service was okay, our waitress was a bit bored disaffected youth, but that didn't stop the meals from coming out very quickly, piping hot and prompt. By the time we left there was a queue of people waiting for a free table. Dishes were about ten dollars. Not gluten-free friendly, but you can take your meat eating aunties and parents and whatever and they will love what they have but be jealous of what you have.


Tak Chee House
1364 William St
Northbridge

Closed on Mondays