yemen skhug sauce at lotf

Thanks to the generosity of Lord of the Fries, I ended up at a tasting event in December where I tried lots of things on the menu that I'd never eaten before. Part of my delicious problem with the Lord is that I have some things I really really love, so every time I go there I buy the same thing (cone of vegan french canadian, mini original burger OR mini parma burger), which is delicious and wonderful but sadly means there are huge swathes of the menu that I've never tried.

Fi has already blogged about our excursion to this tasting event, which is handy because in my uncharacteristic* tardiness in blogging, I've managed to delete all the photos I took of the evening. However I can tell you that it was delicious and fun and the owners are charming, answering all of my questions and allowing me to sample anything I wanted to, including the chocolate mousse,** and the vegan mayo, and the chilli poppers, which are breaded hot chillis stuffed with vegan cheese and basically the most delicious, most ridiculous things I've ever eaten. I love them. 

Anyway, now I order the chilli poppers all the time, which is great because now I can order the potato cake and chilli popper munch box. And I was also furnished with this awesome VIP card, which lets me get a free cone with any sauce every month, and which I am using for the awesome experiment of trying every Sauce of the Month for the year of 2013 without depriving myself of the poutine in my LotF budget. 

I think, in the three and a half years*** I have been living in Melbourne, I have tried LotF's Sauce of the Month once only. I know! So now I am living on the edge, trying them every time. 

Today Fi and I had a midweek lunch picnic at Flagstaff Gardens, joined by Danni and E, and of course the Rocket. I baked orange and poppyseed biscuits (recipe tomorrow), but in my geniusness decided to scoot on over to visit the Lord at Melbourne Central and grab a cone of this month's sauce in my handy-dandy tupperware container.****

This sauce, the Yemen Skhug, is super delicious and this evening there has been much lamenting around the house that no sampling of this delicious sauce had occurred previously, and now the month is nearly over! The Yemen Skhug is based on skhug, or zhug, and the Lord's January newsletter tells me that it is a hot paste common in Middle Eastern and North African cuisines, and the Lord mixes chilli, tomato, garlic, olive oil, coriander, parsley, lemon, herbs and spices together. 

I'm interested in learning more about skhug, in both its red and green forms, and the Yemeni cuisine it traditionally accompanies. That's how great I found this sauce. 

Lord of the Fries
You know where to find it, it's everywhere. Except Brunswick and Southern Cross, where I really want it. 

*this is a lie

**at this point in writing this review, I paused to go and buy the ingredients for chocolate mousse, which is now setting in the fridge

***TECHNICALLY two and a half years, because China
****this was a genius idea and I recommend it to you and all of your friends, especially when you're on your bike

spiced sweet potato and pistachio cake

I wanted to bake something today, and there was half a sweet potato in the house, and I thought, why not? No regrets, it was delicious straight out of the oven and if you give me half a mo, I bet I'll declare it's delicious cold with a cup of tea, too.


sweet potato and pistachio cake

you will need:
one and a third cups of flour (I used half self-raising and half plain)
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 very heaped teaspoon of ground ginger
a shake of salt
a shake of ground cloves
half a teaspoon of nutmeg
an amount of sweet potato that makes 1 - 1.5 cups after it's boiled and mashed
1 cup of sugar (i used castor, but i bet brown or coconut sugar would also work great)
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
one third of a cup of oil (canola or something plain)
two chinese soupspoons of apple sauce
a handful of pistachios.

to make it:
peel, dice and boil sweet potato, then drain and mash. let it cool down a bit (i used this opportunity to read some more blogs). then combine flour, baking powder, spices and salt in a large bowl. in a separate bowl, whisk together the oil and the sugar until combined, then add the vanilla essence and the apple sauce. mix this with the sweet potato until it's a nice consistency, and pour into the dry ingredients. mix until it's just combined, then throw in the pistachios and give it a stir twice more just to get those through.

bake at 180C for about 30 minutes, or until baked through. i used baking paper in my loaf tin.

disanxian & tofu + cabbage soup

Two of my favourite discoveries while I was living in Beijing were 地三鲜 (disanxian) and 豆腐白菜汤 (doufubaicaitang). 地三鲜 is the greatest eggplant dish ever, featuring the 'three earth treasures', a complicated and oil heavy (but delicious!) combination of eggplant, potato and green capsicum in a soy saucey roux. 豆腐白菜汤 in contrast is a simple soup made up of tofu, chinese cabbage, and not a lot else, which is deceptive in its tastey-ness. It looks really boring and sounds really plain, but it's actually one of my favourite soups ever. Be warned if you order either of these in restaurants, though - sometimes they're made with chicken stock!

As I have mentioned before I learnt how to cook a lot of dishes during my year in China, and I hope to share a lot of them with you now that I'm back in my own kitchen and trying them out here at home, but these are by far my favourites and hence why they were almost the first thing I cooked upon my return. The delay in blogging them is mostly because I was too lazy to translate out of Chinese and into English for you. Sorry! I promise I do love you!

I'm posting these two recipes together because I only have the one picture - tofu and cabbage in a white bowl on a white background makes for the brightest photo ever! So it didn't really work out.
地三鲜 / Disanxian 
Three Earth Treasures
ingredients
2 garlic cloves, minced ish
two chinese soup spoon of dark soy, and the same of light soy
half a cup of stock
a little cornstarch

1 big eggplant (or 2 small eggplants), cut into chunks that are about twice as big as the potato.
2-3 medium potatoes, cut into funny, irregular but similarly sized chunks
1 green capsicum, cut into chunks

a whole lot of oil

method
Bring up the heat on your wok and load it up with some oil. Fry the potatoes until golden! Remove them, and (in the same oil, add more if necessary) fry the eggplant until golden! Fry the capsicum for a minute or two! Remove most of the oil (if you need to, I usually use just enough oil from the beginning that by the time I get to this stage there's not much left whoops), leaving just enough to do some stirfrying.

Fry the garlic, then add the stock and the soy sauce. Bring the soup to a boil, and thicken it, then add the vegetables and give it all a chance to reduce. You want this dish to be a little saucy but not too much!

Fried and delicious, it's so tasty. Serve with other dishes and something carby.


豆腐白菜汤 
Tofu + Cabbage Soup

I would just like to reiterate that there are no words to describe how much I love this soup. It can also be served with some rice noodles, but I like to have it as a final dish in a banquet.

ingredients
an appropriate amount of chinese cabbage, enough to fit into two hands when it's shredded thickly
five or six cups of veggie stock
a shake or two of salt
a shake of rice wine
thinly sliced ginger, about 2cm
400g firm tofu, diced into cubes of about 2cm
a teaspoon of sesame oil
optional: a star anise, a shake or three of light soy sauce, some rice noodles, dried shiitake mushrooms

method
Bring stock to a boil and add the ginger, salt, cabbage and rice wine, as well as the soy sauce and star anise if you're adding it. Allow to simmer, covered, for 15 minutes, then add tofu, and allow to cook through (about five minutes). Add (rehydrated) mushrooms, noodles, or sesame oil at this point if you're adding them.

Serve with your meal. It's delicious.

baihe vegetarian [百合素食] [dongcheng, beijing]

After a long exhausting day out in the outskirts of Beijing (1.5 hours on the subway south of the city), no lunch, and three hours of facilitating a large group of people all on my own, I was so hungry I could barely talk, so Emilly met me at Baihe Vegetarian, less than a ten minute walk away from my apartment. We sat down and started picking food quickly, so I could eat as soon as possible.



We ordered the satay noodles, the chicken curry, and the dry roast potatoes. These came out rapidly, delicious and warm. The dry roast potatoes, despite being neither dry nor roasted, were my favourite. They were served in a tasty, mild sauce, in a platter with a flame underneath to keep it bubbling away. The noodles and the chicken were nothing to scoff at, though the potatoes in the curry were a tad underdone. They all were delicious though, and exactly what I needed after a long day of no food.



I really enjoyed Baihe and, with its close proximity to my house, is a place I plan to revisit for sure. Prices are moderate, about 130Y including fresh juices. Service is friendly and helpful.

Baihe Vegetarian / Lily's Vegetarian / 百合素食
23 Caoyuan Hutong
off dongzhimen nei bei xiaojie
Dongcheng District
Beijing

东直门内北小街草原胡同甲23号

Take line 2 to Dongzhimen station, exit D or B, walk directly West along Dongzhimen inner, at the first major intersection turn right. Caoyuan Hutong is the second alley on your left. The menu has English subtitles (and pictures!), access includes a step up and a step down and several ledges in the way. There is a toilet on the premises. Staff don't speak English.

white nights / 白夜西餐 [dongzhimen, beijing]

My first ever visit to a Russian restaurant!

It surprises me how many people think they've never had Russian food, or don't know what Russian food entails. A number of my friends (not my housemate, whose family is Russian and was the one to suggest the restaurant) paged through the menu, unexpectedly discovering they actually knew many Russian dishes, such as stroganov, or Chicken Kiev.

Russian food is pretty cream and meat heavy, so I went for two things that V was pretty sure I could eat: pierogi, and vareniki, both filled with potato, and when I asked the waitstaff, they said there was no dairy so I went for it. The vareniki were fried and looked like curry puffs, and the pierogi were steamed, and they were all delicious. An entire meal of potato and pastry and I have no regrets.

The photos didn't turn out, little white things on little white plates in a dimly lit, smoke-filled restaurant, so here instead have a photo of our refreshments for the evening:



a bottle of vodka and some strawberry nectar, ordered from the menu. We were expected to drink the entire bottle, and we did, just five of us, and I desperately wish I'd brought Berocca to China with me when I woke up the next morning.

The meal was good, stodgy and filling on a very cold evening. Service was a bit average, but the prices were good (including vodka it came to about 60-70RMB each) and it's no more than a ten minute walk from my apartment. A definite revisit.

White Nights / 白夜西餐
13A Beizhong Jie
off Dongzhimennei Dajie, near the Russian Embassy
Dongcheng District

on PT: Take the subway to Dongzhimen Station, exit A, walk East along Dongzhimen Outer Street and take the second right. Stairs to get into the building, poor lighting, and the toilet is down some stairs and around a corner. Ordering and payment at the table. Menu is in English, Russian and Chinese with pictures. Waitstaff speak Mandarin.

Was it vegan rating: probably. I asked and was told what I ordered had no dairy, and I didn't get sick afterwards. I didn't ask about egg because V thought it was very unlikely.

东城区东直门内大街北中街甲13号

now vegan: chips at grill'd

It has long disappointed me that I was unable to try Grill'd's chips, hailed as delicious and amazing, but coated in beef tallow before they were fried (groosssss). So it was with delight that I recently heard the news that all the chips in all of Grill'd's stores are 100% vegan.

So of course I raced out to try them (accompanied by Fi).



They are chunky. And salty - giant globs of salt. And very herby. Not the best chips in old Melbourne Town, but pretty tasty!

potato boston bun

When Emilly and I were invited to dinner with Ger + Em and asked to provide some dessert at short notice, I was stricken with indecision. But with the blog event for VegMel's 2nd birthday, it seemed fortuitous to tackle one of the recipes I've had bookmarked for months.



My first recipe for the birthday blog event (you should participate too!) is this potato boston bun recipe, first blogged by Johanna at Green Gourmet Giraffe. Ever since Johanna first posted it, I had been intrigued and definitely willing to give it a go. I love boston buns, and I love potatoes, how could this not be a great combination?

I made only a few minor mods to this recipe, increasing a few proportions and decreasing a few others, but mostly keeping it all the same. It was delicious on the day, and still delicious this morning, with a little nuttelex.

potato boston bun
based on the recipe at Green Gourmet Giraffe, originally from the ABC

ingredients for the bun
2 small white potatoes, peeled and mashed
three quarters of a cup of castor sugar
2 cups self raising flower
1 cup soy milk
1 teaspoon mixed spice
1 cup mixed fruit

ingredients for the icing
three quarters of a cup of icing sugar
three quarters of a cup of desiccated coconut
a few drops of vanilla essence
2 tablespoons of hot or even warmwater
1 tablespoon nuttelex

the method of bunening
Preheat the oven to 200C.

Mix together the potato and the sugar. Mix in the flour, mixed spice, and soy milk. When it's all smooth (though there can be a few potato lumps), add the fruit and loosely combine. Pour into a lined circular tin and smooth the top around.

Bake for about 50 mins until golden brown and firm to the touch. When you put the skewer in to test, it can be a little not-quite done, it'll cool deliciously.

Remove from tin and allow to cool.

For the icing, mix together the icing sugar, coconut, vanilla essence, nuttelex and the hot water. Mix it thoroughly until a spreadable paste is formed. Add more hot water if necessary. Spread it over the top of the bun.

Cut and eat, oh yeah.

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.

baked potatoes

Danni had this genius idea that we should try baking potatoes. (ETA Danni disclaims genius, this idea was actually Jo's). This is something we hadn't done in an absolute age, so long, in fact, that we weren't really sure what we were doing, and there was some flustering around the kitchen in confusion.



Things we learnt about baked potatoes:

• put the avocado on after you bake them, not before
• careful when you're pre-cooking the potatoes in the microwave - things might get messy
• drizzle some oil

Other than these learn-on-the-go things, it was actually pretty easy! It went like this:

Precook your potatoes in the microwave - stab them first a few times with a fork. When they are pretty much cooked through, remove from the microwave and cut into the tops to create a well or a wedge. Fill this space with nuttelex, mushrooms, beans, cherry tomatoes, chives, and whatever else brings you delight, chopped in to little pieces. Drizzle with olive oil, cover with grated cheese (we used smoked cheddar sheeze), and wrap in alfoil. Bake at 180C for about 15 minutes, or until the cheese is melted and the potato is cooked through.

Top it with avocado and some sour creamy sorts of things. We didn't top it with anything sour creamy - the only thing available was tofutti sour cream, and it's not very nice. If anyone has any recipe suggestions for sour cream, please share them!

We also baked the wedge cut outs at the same time, to have some delicious potato wedges.

poutine

I really enjoy cooking, and being all elaborate in the kitchen. And I love fresh food, fresh fruit and vegetables, and working with super fresh, raw ingredients.

And sometimes, what I really want to do is make something battery and oily and delightful.



This poutine goes like this: half a bag of potato gems, a block of smoked cheddar vegan cheese (maybe redwood?), half a cup of vegan gravy (I use orgran, with a teaspoon of massels vegan beef stock powder added in). Cook the potato gems, and when they're crispy, pour the gravy over them, and top with the grated cheese.

Good times.

scalloped potatoes + pasta with a raw tomato sauce

Saturday night dinner on my own: scalloped potatoes and a pasta served with a raw tomato sauce.



I had never cooked scalloped potatoes before, so I was very intrigued to give it a try! This was the focus of my cooking for Saturday night, but I wanted something else to go with it, for although potatoes are very delicious, they are not really a meal on their own.

The sauce was based off a recipe in New Asian Traditions. It was made up of two tomatoes, roughly chopped, with a small handful of sun-dried tomatoes, and some oregano and basil, all blended together. I tossed this through the drained pasta fresh off the stove, so the sauce warmed but was still raw. It was awesome!

Not as super awesome as the scalloped potatoes though, I was very happy with them.

scalloped potatoes



This made three serves of a side of potatoes – I could have used a tiny pot but I loved the idea of potato left overs.

ingredients
three large potatoes
half a brown onion
two cloves garlic, minced
¼ tsp nutmeg
2 tbl savoury yeast flakes/nutritional yeast
1 tbl plain flour
quarter cup of cashews
1 cup water
1 cup soy milk
salt + pepper
nuttelex for cooking

method
Wash the potatoes, and slice into thin circles. Dice the onion. In some nuttelex/marg, start to fry the onion, then add the garlic and the potato. Continue frying for about ten minutes, or until the potato starts to brown.

In the meantime, blend together the cashews, nutmeg, savoury yeast flakes, flour, water, soy milk, salt and pepper. When the potato and onion is ready, put into a baking dish, and pour the sauce mix over the top. Mix slightly if needed. Cover and bake at 200C for about thirty minutes, then remove the lid and bake uncovered for another ten minutes.

bangers and mash and some sweet potato chips

New Year's Day was a bit warm, and the house was stifling, in part due to the damper I'd baked for lunch and the pancakes I'd cooked for breakfast. I decided an easy, lazy summer dinner was in order.



Deciding to make potato and gravy with some sweet potato chips was perhaps not the best idea for a warm summer evening, given the oven was then on for a good forty minutes. Still, it was delightful and easy, and it was exciting to eat potatoes and gravy for the first time in years! We had delicious sausages and some peas rounding out the meal (and an attempt at nutrition).

We've been using the Orgran's gravy, with D in charge of gravy stirring. It congeals fairly quickly after it comes off the heat, but it served just fine, and, though it is a little transparent it tastes pretty good.


spicy sweet potato chips

ingredients
two medium-sized sweet potatoes
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
some black pepper
3 tablespoons or so of olive oil.

method
Peel the sweet potatoes, and cut in to chips. I like to make mine about a half cm across and about ten to fifteen centimetres in length. Combine all the other ingredients, and stir through the potatoes until well coated.
Bake at 230C for about forty minutes, turning halfway, until firm and crispy.

aloo masala pies

Aloo Masala is often the filling in a dosa. Using it as the filling for a puff pastry pie was tasty, though nothing like eating dosa. But now that I'm happy with my aloo masala, the next step is of course to attempt making my own dosa.



Aloo Masala Pies

ingredients
4 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 onion, diced
2 green chillis, deseeded and sliced width-ways
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon tumeric
some coriander
2 tablespoons desiccated coconut
1 tablespoon red chilli flakes
1 tomato, diced
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
1 large sheet of puff pastry

method
Boil the potato until half cooked, then drain. Fry the green chilli, onion and garlic, until the onion is golden and soft. Add cumin, tumeric, coriander, mustard seeds and chilli flakes, then tomato. Allow to simmer for a few minutes, then add potato, and mix through until covered. Leave to simmer until potato is cooked through and all liquid has rendered down, stirring occasionally. Stir in the coconut.

Spoon mixture into four ramekins, and cover with one quarter of the puff pastry. Brush with buttery thing, and bake at 190C for 15 – 20 minutes.

a new lentil pie recipe

Every four weeks or so I have to trot on out to uni for a three hour lecture that finishes about 20:30. By the time I get home I'm usually quite hungry, so D is left to prepare a hearty dinner that's going to be filling but won't weigh me down two hours before bedtime.

Last night's lecture ended spectacularly early, it being the last of the semester, so when I get home D was still admist the preparations and somehow I ended up finishing cooking dinner, which was very tricky on D's part!

It was an adaption of this recipe, but I think ours was probably more awesome, or certainly more to D's taste (D dislikes parsnips and celery). I think what makes this pie really tasty is cooking the lentils in stock, they soak up that extra delicious flavour.

I've posted a lentil pie recipe here before, but where that one was more like a dahl lentil pie, this is more like a lentil shepherd's pie.

Lentil Pie

ingredients:
two or three sweet potatoes
1 cup lentils (I think D used a combination of red and yellow)
1 onion (diced)
a dozen mushrooms (sliced)
1 carrot (diced)
1 tbl tomato paste
2 bay leaves
some stock
rosemary
garlic (minced)
pepper
3 tomatoes (diced)
1 tbl light soy sauce
2 or 3 tbl pumpkin seeds


method

Simmer the lentils in a few cups of stock for about half an hour, forty-five minutes.

Fry the carrots and the onion until carrot starts to soften. Add garlic, followed by mushrooms. Fry until looking delicious, then add tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes just start to go mushy. Drain the lentils and add, along with pepper, soy sauce, pumpkin seeds, bay leaves, tomato paste and rosemary. Leave to simmer for five minutes.

In the meantime boil and mash the potatoes in whatever is your preferred method.

Divide in to four ramekins, top with sweet potato, bake at 200C for 20 minutes.

shepherd's pie

I posted the recipe for this pie some years ago in my old food blog, but I made it again last night and thought I’d post it up here.


Shepherd's Pie



This is a great pie for hiding things in. It’s so chunky, an extra ingredient is easy to slip in. It’s not necessarily going to hide the shape of the mushrooms, since mushrooms are pretty obvious, but it helps to hide the flavour and texture, if your aversion to mushrooms is, like mine was, solely texture based.

When we first went vegetarian, D declared that I had to learn to eat a lot of the dreaded mushrooms, and having recipes that made it easy to disguise the flavour really helped. And now I really like mushrooms!


ingredients

1 can kidney beans (drained)
handful of mushrooms
one tomato
half cup stock or wine
one carrot
half cup of peas
half capsicum
half an onion
chives
parsley
chilli flakes
pepper
one garlic clove
tomato sauce
four potatoes


method

Dice the carrot, onion, tomato and capsicum. Fry the onion in some olive oil with the chilli flakes, pepper, parsley, chives and a squirt of tomato sauce until the onion is translucent. Mince the garlic and fry, then add the carrot, capsicum and tomato, as well as the stock or wine. You may not need the whole half cup, though. After the tomato renders down a bit, add the mushrooms (diced or cut small) and the kidney beans. Allow the liquid to evaporate a little, then add the peas and heat through. Spoon filling into an oven dish.

In the meantime, prepare the potatoes for mashing. I like to boil them with some garlic, and mash with a little nuttelex. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top of the filling, then brush or drizzle a little olive oil.

Bake for ten minutes at 190C.

aloo muttar

Since returning from Singapore I've been going through an Indian curry sort of phase, which is handy as the weather has cooled rapidly and we're moving in to the end of Autumn.

Aloo Muttar



ingredients

1 shallot (chopped finely)
teaspoon of coriander seeds
half teaspoon of cumin
3 potatoes (peeled and diced)
cup or so of peas
1 star anise
half teaspoon red chilli powder
half teaspoon of garam masala (this recipe is only gluten-free if you make your own garam masala. if you use store-bought, you will find it often contains wheat)
one and a half (or so) cups of stock


method

Fry shallot, coriander and cumin in a tiny amount of oil. Add potatoes, cover in mixture, and add star anise. Fry for a bit, add stock (enough to half cover potatoes), leave to simmer on low, covered, for ten minutes. After ten minutes, add peas, chilli powder and garam masala, add more stock or water if necessary.

If you're using frozen peas, defrost by soaking in warm water for a couple of minutes first, then drain before adding to the pot.

After five to ten minutes, remove from heat and leave to soak up stock.

This dish takes about half an hour (or longer, if you're not so good at chopping).