japan vii: Otis!, Hiroshima

Go to Japan, eat Mexican food?

Otis is this adorable live music venue just south of Peace Park in Hiroshima. It's been open for 23 years, and for the first few years people used to draw on the walls, including this giant piece by some guy from Pixar (whose name escapes me now). It's a really fun place, and they serve vegan cake!

It was a cold day, as were all the days in Japan, so I went for a delicious spicy soup, served with salad and bread. They all knew what vegan meant, and I wish the photo of my cake had turned out so you could see that instead of being served with ice cream, it was served with cubes of frozen mango. Brilliant!



Otis!
1-20 Kako-machi, Naka-ku
Hiroshima

広島県広島市中区加古町1-20

Five minutes walk south of Peace Park on the main road

high tech burrito ii: adventures in substitution

I've blogged previously about High Tech Burrito in Glenferrie and, embarrassingly, that review is actually up on the front window at High-Tech, above a giant sign calling for the attention of vegans and vegetarians: all their burritos can be made vegan or vegetarian.

My most recent forays to High-Tech have been an expedition to find out how well these meaty burritos translate to vegan.



My first modified burrito was, on recommendation from the counterhand, the Thai Chicken burrito, subbed with tofu and with no cream. This burrito, served in a tomato flavoured tortilla, was amazing. The curry had a great flavour, and was a little spicy, and I loved it. It was just like eating a red curry from the local Thai restaurant, but in a burrito. I definitely want to eat this again.



Also on this visit, I once again sampled the salsa and cornchips, mostly because I think one particular lunch companion, who ordered them, is obsessed with them. The chips are made on the premises, and there's something about them that is totally delicious.



My second burrito attempt was the Yellow Curry Shrimp, with veggies and tofu subbed in. This was okay, but nothing exciting. The curry flavour was a bit mild and the vegetables didn't really suit it. Probably won't try this one again.

Also on this visit, I discovered that people who work on Glenferrie Road get a discount! And also that there's a special, cheaper menu for students.

I'm so pleased with this whole substitution thing, and am definitely looking forward to future visits where I explore these options more.

GF options are available

High-Tech Burrito
838 Glenferrie Road
Hawthorn

nacho style baked potato

A few weeks ago we made baked potatoes for the first time in a while, and it was pretty exciting! We flustered around the kitchen, and made some mistakes, and ended up with some delicious potatoes for dinner!

Recently, I went to class and left Danni (and Jo) in charge of dinner, and a decision was made to do it again, but with a twist - nacho toppings! It was BRILLIANT.



For inside the potatoes, Danni fried some cumin, paprika, and chili flakes (lots) with some tomato sauce, then added some refried beans and about a third of a can of diced tomato. This simmered on the stove for about fifteen minutes.

The potatoes were then topped with grated cheezley. This concoction was then wrapped in alfoil and baked for about fifteen minutes at 180C.

In the meantime, Danni made our usual red bean and rice mix. This was served on the side of the potatoes, with a little guacamole.

It was SUPER DELICIOUS.

nacho cheese nachos

After all that talk of nacho cheese dip, we finally made nachos and nacho cheese dip at the same time!



It was basically the greatest. Making both the nacho sauce and the nacho cheese at the same time doesn't add anything to the cooking time, as the nacho cheese is easy to cook whilst simmering, but I would suggest perhaps making it in advance, otherwise the nacho cheese is a bit runny. But still delicious!

I am really loving this nacho cheese dip. It goes with everything!

nacho cheese nachoes
half a red onion (diced)
one clove garlic (minced)
four tomatoes (diced)
one can refried beans
handful mushrooms (diced)
1 can kidney beans if that's your thing
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
a few shakes of oregano and parsley
two squeezes of tomato sauce
corn chips
rice if that's your thing

method
In some oil, fry the onion, garlic, cumin, paprika, oregano, parsley, and tomato sauce. Don't let the spices burn! Fry until the onion softens, then add the tomatoes and kidney beans, and leave to simmer, lid on, for ten minutes. Then add the mushrooms, and simmer lid on for another six or seven minutes. Add the refried beans and allow to heat through, then serve, topped with delicious nacho cheese.

deconstructed burritos

I'm not sure if this was part of a bid to end Same-Same Cookering (TM Miss T), or an effort to combine a number of comfort foods in to one, but recently we've been toying with the idea that a tortilla is quite similar in many ways to roti.

So we decided to try eating food on tortillas as if we were eating dahl and roti. This was a pretty genius idea.



The rice was a brown rice with red beans concoction, and I served it with some refried beans (warm, heated from a can *cough*).

As little cool sides I added 'avocado carrot with garlic salad' and 'fresh mexican chile sauce,' both from A Taste of Mexico, an awesome vegetarian Mexican cookbook. The chile sauce was nicely spicy, and I got to use coriander from our balcony garden! The combination of grated carrot with avocado was also very nice. Also added some shredded iceberg lettuce, because we had some rolling around the fridge.

This was really simple, and really delicious! I love beans and rice.

rice and red bean buritto

D made dinner tonight, and we were both feeling lazy and tired and, inspired by several recent posts (maybe by Carla and Wanting Kneading?), D whipped up this amazing rice and beans burrito.

It was so delicious, I only paused in eating it to exclaim "this is delicious!" several times. I'm a little disappointed that tomorrow's lunch is put aside for a work Christmas function, so I can't eat the left overs - that will be D's delight!



This was delicious, and so fast and simple, I will be making this again very soon. This is only GF dependent on your wrap, so make sure to check.

beans and rice burritos

ingredients
two (small) cups of brown rice
veggie beef stock
1 clove garlic
small branch of fresh basil
a heavy shake each of Mexican chilli, cayenne pepper, cumin, paprika, and dried oregano
4 roma tomatoes (diced)
add red kidney beans (one 400g can)
3 tablespoons of tomato sauce*
just over two cups of water
various delicious toppings (we used shredded lettuce, grated carrot, some salsa, and some really delicious freshly made guacamole)
tortillas

method
Cook the brown rice in two cups of water with half a veggie beef stock cube or equivalent.

In a little oil, fry garlic, fresh basil, chilli, cayenne pepper, cumin, paprika and oregano for a minute or two, then add the tomatoes and kidney beans. Stir well, and leave to simmer for ten minutes with the lid on, stirring occasionally. After ten minutes, check to make sure the mixture has reduced well, then add the tomato sauce, rice, and no more than a quarter of a cup of water. Simmer for another five minutes. Serve warm on an tortilla, with various toppings. Wrap and eat, messily or otherwise.



*I've been getting a lot of 'what is that?' questions lately in regards to various things that I know people have in the US, they just don't know the name we use for it! In this instance, I mean ketchup.

quick and easy tacos

We've been eating a lot of beans lately, and decided to try making some tacos with kidney beans.



The great thing about tacos are how easy they are to make. Grated carrot, diced tomato, guacamole, shredded lettuce, and in this instance a tomato-spicey-kidney bean mixture (cooked for a bit), scooped into hard taco shells. Hardly the most authentic meal ever, but certainly delicious (and very Australian-Mexicana, thanks, Ol Elpaso!)

a weekend getaway of in-house noms

Went down South to Eagle Bay for the weekend, it was awesome.

The plan for the weekend was to hang out with fabulous friends, play games, and eat a lot of food, and that is exactly what we did.

We started our long weekend of noms on Thursday evening, with some pizza. Gilli made the pizza base in Perth, and it rose on the drive down. We ended up with four pizzas, two vegan and two not-vegan.
Our pizzas were delicious, I love a good home made pizza. Gilli had made two different types of base, one herbed and one plain, and we covered them with awesome things like pumpkin, fresh basil, and avocado. We also had this amazing tomato and cashew pesto that Greg had picked up from a craft fair earlier this year, it was a little spicy and delicious on the pizza, and as a spread on bread!



Friday’s breakfast was all vegan but for the ice-cream. I made pancakes, and Kandace made waffles, and Gilli stewed some apples, which was awesome. We supplemented with banana, golden syrup, and nuttelex. The waffle mix was new, and wasn’t quite viscous enough to work properly in the waffle maker, but it was still awesome!



At lunch we went to Samudra, a vegetarian restaurant in Dunsborough. Review to follow! (It was delicious) ETA review here.

Friday dinner was a roasted extravaganza, featuring roast pumpkin, roast potato, roast sweet potato, roasted carrot, roast mushrooms and roasted beetroot. Roasted mushrooms are amazing. Amazing! They were field mushrooms, stems removed, sprinkled with oregano and parsley and some other herbs, and I am absolutely going to roast mushrooms from now on. It also included beans, peas, carrots, and one of those Sanitarium roast things.



On Saturday morning Greg and I baked jam thumbprint cookies and lemon and poppy seed muffins. Of course, this delayed breakfast somewhat, but it was worth it.



We finally started cooking a massive fry up for breakfast, including hashbrowns, sausages (vegan and not), toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, and sweet potato hash browns. There was also tea, and jam, and more of the awesome pesto, which featured heavily throughout the weekend.



The sweet potato hash browns were an experiment, and it wasn’t until I started googling that I discovered ‘hash’ means so many different cooking related things! But we wanted hashbrowns, delicious fried flat goodness, and they were fantastic, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. The recipe needs some tweaking, but in general we boiled the potato (peeled and diced) until it was soft but not super soft, then roughly mashed with five tablespoons of plain flour, combined them into cakes and fried them in the frypan for a few minutes. Incredibly delicious!



Saturday dinner was nachos and tacos, simple and fun. I like seeing what toppings people pick.



In preparation for Sunday breakfast, late Saturday night I cooked a pumpkin saag and some dahl. The dahl was my usual recipe, which I know without looking and is so tasty, so my favourite. The saag was an attempt at the pumpkin saag from Veganomicon, but we’d left the recipe on the kitchen counter at home and so I worked from memory. I added a sliced chilli, seeds out, to give it some flavour, and forgot the cinnamon and whatever dried herbs go in it, and I added garlic and ginger. It was different, but still tasty. We served the curry with roti and rice.



Before we left on Sunday afternoon, more baking was to be had, for the trip back to Perth, and I made a whole lot of sushi.

An awesome weekend of noms. D and I were also very appreciative of our friends, not just for their awesomeness in general, but for their awesomeness in ensuring strict separation between vegan implements and non-vegan implements, to minimise cross-contamination.



If you are interested in photos of other parts of our weekend, you can find them here

mexican lentil-nut loaf and jarocho rice

Our friend Caro is in Perth at the moment, and delightfully she brought with her 'A Taste of Mexico,' a vegetarian cookbook. As regular readers of this blog will know, I have a slight obsession with Mexican food, borne of Australia's lack of available Mexican food.

So last Friday I flipped through the book and found some interesting recipes, and then modified them a bit as we went along. This lentil and nut loaf is super delicious, and the sweetness of the rice was pretty awesome, too.

These two recipes were modified from 'A Taste of Mexico' by Kippy Nigh



lentil-cashew loaf

ingredients
loaf
vegetable oil
1 tbl onion, finely chopped
3 celery ribs, chopped
2 chillis, chopped
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
300g(ish) red lentils, washed
200g cashews, chopped
1/2 cup bread crumbs (you can skip this step, or use gf bread crumbs - just changes the texture)
3-4 cups water
1/4 cup parsley
1 tablespoon light soy sauce (or tamari)
1/2 teaspoon salt

tomato sauce
vegie oil
1 tablespoon onion, finely chopped
5 tomatoes
1 cup vegie stock
1 bay leaf
salt + pepper


method
Heat the oil, saute the onion, celery and chillis for five minutes. Add the lentils, stir, and add three cups of water. Bring to a boil, then lower and simmer, lid on, for 40 minutes. You may need to add a little more water. Add the parsley, nuts, bread crumbs, soy sauce, and salt, and combine. Mix well.

Line a bread pan (13x23 ish cm) with foil, and fill with the lentil mixture. Cover, and bake for 45 minutes at 175C.

Saute the onion in some oil until golden, then add the tomato. Simmer over low heat with the lid on for twenty minutes, then add the bay leaf, salt and pepper, and a little bit of water, then continue to simmer for another twenty minutes.

When the nutloaf is finished baking, leave to stand in the pan for five minutes before removing. Leave to cool another five or ten minutes before cutting. Pour the tomato sauce over the top.




Jarocho Rice

method
1/2 onion chopped
garlic clove, minced
lots of olive oil
2 cups long grain rice
3 cups of vegie stock
1/2 cup sultanas
1 sliced banana

Saute the onion and garlic in the oil for five minutes. Add the rice and saute for ten minutes, then add everything else, and bring to a boil, before reducing the heat and leaving to simmer for twenty minutes.

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.

sweet potato burritos

I don’t have a great story for this one, I was feeling unwell yesterday afternoon, so instead of going to my German class I went straight home from work and curled up in bed, so instead of whatever was lying around the house (the original plan), D felt obliged to cook a full dinner before rushing off to band practice. D thought of this on the walk down from West Perth to Woolies in town, and gets full points for awesomeness. It was so tasty, I want to eat it again very soon!

Mexican food is not so ubiquitous in Australia, so I don't really have a lot of experience with it. There is usually only one brand of tortilla in supermarkets! I apologise if you make it and go, "doesn't taste like any burrito I've ever eaten." It is still very tasty. Also I apologise if this isn't actually a burrito, and is infact an enchillada! I took some time deliberating over which it was this morning, but I think the wheat tortilla makes it a burrito. Feel free to educate me in the comments if need be.



sweet potato burritos

ingredients:
four tomatoes (diced)
1 can kidney beans
1 can refried beans
1 sweet potato
shake or three of cumin, cayenne and paprika
dried chilli
small handful of pumpkin seeds
1 quarter red onion (diced)
6 wheat tortillas

method:
In some olive oil, fry the cumin, cayenne, paprika and chilli. As it becomes fragrant, add the tomatoes, red onion, and kidney beans, as well as some of the liquid from the kidney beans. Leave to simmer on medium-low, with the lid on, for about twenty minutes, adding water about halfway through if necessary. In the meantime, mash the sweet potato. After twenty minutes, the mixture on the stove should have reduced beautifully. Add the refried beans at this point, and leave to simmer another five minutes. Reserve about a half a cup of the mixture (preferably with minimal kidney beans), and mix the rest with the sweet potato. Divide the mixture evenly into the tortillas, roll and place on a baking tray. Drizzle with the reserved liquid, and bake on 170C for about ten minutes.

Because I used full-sized el paso tortillas, I found that one and a half were plenty for me, so this serves about four people.

Serve with guacamole.

zapata's mexican restaurant, fremantle

As part of my current obsession with Mexican restaurants, last week we went to Zapata’s in Fremantle.

The menu is fairly extensive, and though I found my portion size to be a little on the small side the prices do reflect that, so next time I’ll probably order something a little more expensive. M ordered the fajitas, for example, which are among the more expensive items on the menu and he was unable to finish his meal (though he really wanted to).



The spicy was spicy, but my enchilada was soft and delicious and everyone (all ten of us) enjoyed their meals, and I will definitely be going back. On Tuesdays they do cheap tacos and cocktails, I understand, and everything that we wanted vegan came out vegan.

They are able to do separate billing if you let them know before you order. I can't remember how they were for gluten-free options.

Zapata's Mexican Restaurant
Shop 30, South Terrace Piazza
Fremantle
(opposite Gelare, above the Pickled Fairy)

that little mexican place, north perth

I've yet to find a review of That Little Mexican Place that is mediocre: it's either described as fantastic or quite terrible. As a result, I was prepared to be disappointed, and I was prepared to be contented.

Although the service can only be described as 'odd,' with our waiter taking away our shared entree (guacamole and blue corn chips) before we had quite finished all the chips, and a waitress dropping by to ask how our meal was and to tell me I was weird because I had yet to finish my drink, the meals were quite tasty and the restaurant was warm and interesting. I liked the decor, and little things like the great glasses and the fake candles (complete with flickering light). D and I both had the tamales de frijol negro, and the four of us shared the guacamole and blue corn chips, after I was assured that the guacamole was sans dairy. The tamales were a bit dry, but the beans were tasty and slightly creamy and the rice was quite excellent, so mixed all together it made for an ugly but delicious meal. They are also listed on the menu as 'can be made vegan,' apparently the only difference is the cream that is usually placed on the top to make it look pretty.

Having been assured that the meal was completely vegan, and receiving the bill which said '2 x tamales - vegan,' I'm willing to believe that the white stuff on top of the beans was vegan (as seen in this picture above), but it did look quite a lot like goat's cheese, so we erred on the side of caution, scooped it aside and continued on. We are unsure, but it's certainly a point of question mark from this visit.

Juices of the day were hibiscus and tamarind. The hibiscus was sort of like ribena, so much so that Andy insisted on calling it such all evening, to the irritation of our waiter, and I was surprised and pleased by the flavour of the tamarind, which I have never drunk as a juice before.

The restaurant is tiny, making the seating a bit cramped, and the meals took quite some time to arrive, and the service was, as I mentioned, a little odd. I do also wish that the menu was a little more vegan-friendly, though what we had was very good, and our waiter knew what he was talking about when we had questions (both vegan and non vegan, and also gluten-free) about the food. But the food was quite tasty and I loved the juice, the menu is clearly labelled with gf and veg, and overall it was worth the visit. I might go back in the future, I might not, we'll see if the menu develops and how visits to other Mexican restaurants pan out (next week I hope to try Zapata's in Fremantle).

That Little Mexican Place
382 Fitzgerald Street

North Perth

sweet potato and spinach enchiladas

I'm really happy with how these turned out. The Anti-Veg Brother-in-Law ate them, who knows if he actually enjoyed them but he claimed to, and even if he didn't D and I both really liked them.



sweet potato and spinach enchiladas

ingredients:
two medium sweet potatoes
one clove garlic
one bushel spinach
four tomatoes
red onion
one red chili
1/2 tsp chili flakes
1/2 tsp cumin
squeeze of lime juice
about 12 small enchiladas/tortillas (see note)

method:
Finely chop the red onion, and dice the tomatoes. slowly fry about three quarters of the red onion, reserving the other quarter for another time. I generally use it to make a guacamole to accompany this dish. When the onions have softened, add the tomatoes, chili flakes, cumin and chili (which should be chopped). Simmer on medium-high for a minute or two, then reduce heat and put lid on and leave to simmer for about twenty minutes. The mixture should have reduced to a tomatoey liquid. You can blend it, but I like to leave it quite chunky.

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes, and mince the garlic. Boil the two together until the sweet potato is soft and ready for mashing, at which point, drain and mash the sweet potato and the garlic together. Shred the spinach, then wilt in a small amount of water with the lime juice.

Drain the spinach, and add to the potato mixture. Spoon a scoop or two into each tortilla, or whatever seems to fit well, then roll and add to the pan. Repeat until you have used up all the mixture or all the enchiladas. Pour the tomato mixture over the enchiladas, make sure the mixture covers all of the exposed enchilada area.

Bake at 220C for 20 minutes. Top with guacamole. In this instance, I also served it with potato gems, because too much potato is never enough.


NOTE: This is technically a gluten-free recipe except all of the corn tortillas I find always have wheat in them, so my 'gluten-free' tag in this instance is a question mark. Do corn tortillas with no wheat actually exist? Please let me know so I can tag accurately.

things that are tasty and simple: nachoes

This is a really simple recipe for nachoes. I can't help you with the beer, I'm afraid.



ingredients
cumin
basil
oregano
parsley
paprika
thyme
chili flakes (lots)
salt
pepper
1 can kidney beans (drained)
3 tomatoes (diced)
1 brown onion (diced)
tomato sauce
corn chips


method

Fry the onion and all the herbs etc and the tomato sauce. The amounts are not specified because I just tend to go with what I'm feeling, usually a little more on the spicy things and a little less on the leafy things, but your tastes will vary, of course. I would recommend, however, no more than a shake or three of each.

Fry the above for about ten minutes, or until the onion has become soft and translucent. Add the tomatoes and simmer for another ten minutes with the lid on, then add the kidney beans. Simmer with the lid off for five minutes. Serve on nachoes, topped with some sort of tasty guacamole. I like to use Matthias' guacamole recipe, located here, but halving the amount of red onion.

Just a note that you should be careful buying the corn chips if you're making this recipe to be gluten-free, though of course you knew that.